(NewsNation) — Former President Donald Trump says he won’t use presidential power to retaliate against his opponents if reelected, “except for day one.”
“Under no circumstances — you are promising America tonight — you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Sean Hannity asked the former president during a town hall on Fox News on Tuesday night.
“Except for day one,” Trump replied. “I want to close the border and I want to drill, drill, drill.”
The Republican presidential front-runner then repeated his assertion.
“We love this guy,” Trump said of Hannity. “He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.'”
Earlier in the interview, Hannity posed a similar question, which Trump deflected.
“To be clear, do you in any way have any plans whatsoever, if reelected president, to abuse power, to break the law, to use the government to go after people?” Hannity asked.
“You mean like they’re using right now?” Trump replied, referring to his four criminal indictments.
Trump has made retribution a central theme on the campaign trail and last month vowed to “root out … the radical-left thugs that live like vermin.”
The former president’s political adversaries quickly seized on his dictator remarks.
A Democratic National Committee account on X, formerly Twitter, shared the clip with the caption: “And there you have it.”
“Donald Trump has been telling us exactly what he will do if he’s reelected and tonight he said he will be a dictator on day one. Americans should believe him,” President Joe Biden’s campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said in a statement to the Associated Press.
A super PAC supporting former President Trump clapped back Wednesday, calling Biden the dictator.
“While the White House and their puppets in the media project themselves onto President Trump, the truth is that the real dictator is already in the White House,” Make America Great Again Inc. wrote in an email to “The Hill” on Wednesday.
So far, Trump’s campaign messaging has resonated with Republican voters and he currently holds a 50-point lead over second-place Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Recent NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ polling suggests a potential criminal conviction may do little to change that. More than 70% of GOP respondents said a conviction in “one or more of the criminal cases against Donald Trump” would have no impact on their vote.